Design in Digital Cartography. Evolving Landscape Narrative Tools for Territorial Exploration and Enhancement of Local Heritage

Abstract

Design for territories expands its gaze to the entire spatial experience, which acts and feels in relation to a place. Here, space is a fluid and dynamic element “contaminated” by mutual interaction with human life. This interaction shapes both space and human experience, making them recipients and interlocutors of a project at the same time. One design approach in territorial enhancement is exploring the match between digital cartography and community mapping as tools for the promotion of territories starting from their local identities. Visual narratives of the “active landscape” are thus probed to represent territories as places of submerged heritage worth discovering. Within this framework, the AtlasFor project is presented to create participatory storytelling of the territory, in order to stimulate interest in social capital and culture.

Keywords

• design for territories
• digital cartography
• participated territorial narratives
• active landscape
• territorial enhancement